April in Paris (18 page)

“How is Captain Leibold?” I asked, and instantly saw that I’d made a terrible mistake. I was suspected of high treason; the man across from me was a superior officer. My attempt to act like a member of the family had the opposite effect.

“Since when have you been providing information to the enemy?” the lieutenant asked, his voice unchanged. He opened the file. “Tell us the names of your contacts and describe the operations they’re planning.”

If a prisoner answered the three standard questions immediately and completely, he was spared the worst. The previous night, a sentence has crossed my mind: “You can’t confess a lie.”

I didn’t know where I’d read it. Under the bright lamp, before the A P R I L I N PA R I S . 169

two corporals and the waiting lieutenant, I replied, “I have never divulged any internal information. I have no contacts, and therefore I know nothing of their operations.”

The second lieutenant nodded as if this were exactly the reply he’d been expecting. “We’ve got witnesses who have seen you in civilian clothes. Why do you pass yourself off as a Frenchman?”

Only Rieleck-Sostmann could have betrayed me. Was she sitting in the next room at this moment, listening for the first scream? Was she wearing the gray suit that modestly covered her knees? Had she decided on a different hairdo?

“Who says they’ve seen me?” I asked.

“Do you wear civilian clothes in public or not?”

I said nothing.

He stood up. “Insubordination and fraternizing with the enemy!” He raised his fist, but it was a studied gesture. Soon he’d give his desk a good thump. One of the corporals moved slightly.

The guy—was his name Franz?—was getting impatient. With the French offenders, the prelude rarely lasted so long.

“Who are your contacts?” The second lieutenant’s fist came down heavily on the desk.

“I have no contacts. I’m a Wehrmacht corporal, and I have—”

I noticed the lieutenant’s nod. Almost simultaneously, the first blow struck me. It was as though my temple had been split in half. I flew off my chair; for several moments, everything was white. When I slowly looked up, the second lieutenant had a piece of paper in his hand. “We know the perpetrators’ names,”

he said. “Gérard Joffo, Chantal Joffo, Théodore Benoît, Gustave Thiérisson. Were you in contact with these criminals?”

170 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

“I … know two of them,” I replied with effort.

“You were in contact with them!” the second lieutenant cried.

“Gustave Thiérisson is a barber. I had my hair cut in his shop.”

The second lieutenant stepped closer. His booted legs towered over me. “Would you have us believe you take off the uniform of the Reich, dress as a Frenchman, and associate with the leaders of a criminal organization
without
divulging any of the secret information to which your privileged position gives you access?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

At this point, I figured the corporals would start in on me again. Instead, the lieutenant asked, “Where are these people now?” and walked back to his desk.

With a flash of hope, I realized that they hadn’t caught Chantal and her father. As long as the lieutenant could assume I knew their whereabouts, he and his man would spare me. “I don’t know
exactly
,” I said, being careful.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t think they’re in Paris anymore.”

“Then where are they?”

“I don’t know the exact place.”

The second lieutenant waited until the clerk finished writing.

“Since when did you know about the attack in this nightclub, this Turachevsky’s?” He pronounced the name awkwardly, as if the brothel were completely unknown to him.

I’d thought about this. If they knew about my “double life”

from Rieleck-Sostmann, they must believe I had something to do with the bomb. A grotesque story: German soldier falls under the spell of a beautiful Resistance fighter and allows himself to be en-A P R I L I N PA R I S . 171

ticed into colluding in the assassination of his own people. The actual facts were a bit soberer. I had
known
that Chantal was a member of the Resistance. I should have reported her. Instead of doing that, I’d warned her people about the imminent raid. According to the occupation law, I was guilty.

“Do you think I would have gone to Turachevsky’s if I had known about the attack?” I replied. “Besides, I was wounded in the explosion, too.”

The second lieutenant’s face turned stony. “Three senior SS

officers were killed, along with seven civilians. Two officers are in critical condition in the hospital, with life-threatening mutila-tions! Corporal Roth, however, survives with a scratch on his eye!

What extraordinary luck the fellow has!” He leaned over the desk.

“You knew about the attack! You helped plan it and carry it out!

Admit it!”

The SS corporals moved closer.

“I warned Captain Leibold in time for him to—”

I had put my foot in it. How could I have warned Leibold about something I’d supposedly known nothing about? I sensed that the men behind me would begin at any moment. At the same time, I understood that I
couldn’t
tell the lieutenant anything, even if I wanted to. I knew nothing of Chantal’s whereabouts or the location of her group. It became chillingly clear that there was no way I could avert what was coming to me. Images from the procedures flooded my mind. The water torture, during the course of which some people literally drowned. The broken limbs. The sleep deprivation, which turned even powerful men, men with all their wits about them, into stammering, self-soiling 172 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

wrecks who entered a state of interminably prolonged semicon-sciousness in which they would reveal everything so that they might finally be allowed to sleep.

I was drained and desolated by fear. As they grabbed me and pulled me up, I tried to control my nausea. All the same, I retched, vomiting on a corporal’s stomach. He cursed. The first blows landed on me at the same moment.

Iawoke in a condition whose sole characteristic was fear of further beatings. The notion that torture victims grow accus-tomed to unvarying methods turned out to be hogwash; pain wasn’t trainable. Every turn on my plank bed caused suffering the likes of which had been unimaginable to me until now. I tried to avoid the slightest movement, but lying still was equally painful.

I located the places where the throbbing radiated from and pal-pated clusters of large lumps. I could scarcely find my nose; my injured eye was swollen shut. If I tried to open my mouth, pain shot through my face. My jaw must be broken, I thought. I had seen detainees dragged out of the interrogation room in this condition: The lower part of their faces hung bizarrely to one side; their jawbones and lips no longer obeyed them. I tried to picture my face and fell into a feverish sleep.

174 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

Fresh pains awakened me; the doctor was in my cell. I couldn’t see what he did. He reset; he bandaged. I screamed, but it wasn’t my voice. He murmured something about pulling myself together, then finished his work and left the room. Later, much later, I found porridge and water next to my bed. I drank some water; it ran out of the corners of my mouth and dripped onto the floor. I didn’t touch the porridge. When steps approached, I pricked up my ears in dread; when they passed by, I sank back down, relieved. Between periods of unconsciousness, I heard a distant tapping. Did Henri want to talk to me? I didn’t have the strength to answer and couldn’t concentrate enough to understand the alphabet.

For two days, maybe longer, they left me in peace. Although I never touched the porridge, I didn’t feel hungry. One night, I threw up the water I’d drunk. I waited for Henri’s tapping. I shoved my jacket under my shoulder so that my head was lying against the wall and listened for many hours, tangled in the images my thoughts evoked.

My stern mother came to me; she seemed older than she was in reality. My brother described how he’d been put on the fast track to complete his medical studies; there was an urgent need for physicians. He was accompanied by all the teachers he and I had shared, all wearing beards. One of them showed the company the golden clasp that had been bestowed upon him by His Majesty.

“My father has a soft spot for the emperor,” Chantal said.

She was sitting on the bucket in the corner, wearing the dress I loved most of all. The red dots covered her naked legs to the A P R I L I N PA R I S . 175

knees. She pulled the fabric taut between her thighs. How narrow her waist was. The dress was cut low and tight across her breasts.

“Which emperor?” I tried to sit up.

“Napoléon.” She reached the bed in two swinging strides and sat down on the cool spot next to my knees.

“Papa’s not a monarchist. He’s just fond of ceremony.” She leaned over my hip and rested her elbow on it. “Before the war, he was against anything he thought sounded like a coup d’état.

He cursed the
front populaire
—he said their ideas would drive Germany to ruin.” Cautiously, I laid my hand on Chantal’s thigh.

“I still had short hair back then,” she said, smiling. “Papa and Bertrand often used to sit together in the storeroom.”

“The white-haired man who reads the newspaper?”

She nodded. “While they were in the back, Gustave and I would be out in the shop, reading. Sometimes my father came in, ostensibly to make sure we weren’t getting up to any funny business with the books. What he was actually doing was taking out another bottle of red. Bertrand was an ardent leftist, a member of the
front populaire.
He had a hiding place under the hair-washing basin where he kept a revolver, a small-caliber pistol, and a Mauser. He told Papa, ‘When the time comes for us to go out into the streets, I won’t be late.’ ”

My fingers registered the warmth emanating from Chantal, the barely perceptible movements of her thigh as she spoke. I would have liked to put my hand between her legs.

“Papa said, ‘The people demonstrating in front of the Bastille should go for a walk with their families instead. That’s a better way to spend a Sunday.’ ” She laughed out loud at the memory.

176 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

“Once I eavesdropped on an argument between Bertrand and my father. Papa got so furious, he imagined himself at the head of a machine-gun detachment, rounding up the ringleaders of the revolution. He unmasked them as foreigners and Jews. Bertrand was highly insulted at being lumped together with Jews and left our shop.”

One tap. A pause, then three. Two more, then three more.

Pause. While I was still thinking about the letters
c
and
h,
Chantal stood up. Henri continued. I lost the thread. I heard an
l,
maybe a
p,
but I couldn’t find the connection. I hoped he’d start over when he saw I wasn’t answering. Chantal had disappeared into the corner between the window and the heating pipe. With an effort, I rolled over onto my side, took off my ID tags, and tried to tap out the word
slowly.
Was I using the code correctly?

Henri started tapping in great haste; it seemed to be of the utmost importance. As much as I tried, and as hard as I pressed my ear against the wall, I couldn’t understand him. Eventually, I gave up and sank back down, and the tapping faded away. I fell asleep; I woke up. The corner by the window lay in complete darkness.

The next morning, my cell door opened differently from the way it usually did. The guard didn’t come shuffling in to put porridge and water next to my bed. From the corridor, I heard the sound of heels clicking together. The stillness of men standing at attention.

Pulled and thin, as though reflected in a distorting mirror, Captain Leibold entered my cell. It took me several seconds to re-A P R I L I N PA R I S . 177

alize that he wasn’t part of a dream. Although his back was bandaged, he was wearing the black uniform. His jacket was draped across his shoulders; his cap concealed his head wounds. As I scrutinized him in those seconds, a transformation came over me. Leibold’s come to my rescue, I thought. Only Leibold can help me.

He’s here to release me from my fate. The door closed behind him.

He stood there, pressing his lips together. “You could have gotten away unhurt,” he said softly. Then he came a step closer and hesitated. His expression was sorrowful. I thought about what I must look like. The young man with whom Leibold had so liked to stand beside the window—his own people had smashed my face. I tried to say something but succeeded only in breathing loudly.

“Why did you stay?” He bent over me. “You could have been gone long before the bomb went off.”

“I—didn’t—know—about—it,” I murmured, and gazed at

him, unsure whether he’d understood me.

“One second sooner, and it would have blown you to pieces, too.” He shook his head pensively. “The people upstairs are agreed that you’re a traitor. Do you know that?”

Nodding caused me pain. “I’m not a traitor,” I managed to say. New pain in my lumpy nose; something wet on my cheeks.

“I don’t know why you’re keeping it up,” he said. “You know the procedure.”

I swallowed and remained silent.

“It won’t do you any good. Tell us what we
must
know. After that, things will go better for you. I give you my word.” I’d never seen his eyes so full of warmth.

178 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

“But you’re going to shoot me in any case,” I whispered.

“Yes.” He smiled. “We’re going to shoot you. But it’s over quickly.”

“Why didn’t you send me to the front?”

“No one decides what’s going to happen to him.” As though inadvertently, Leibold reached around behind him, where his bandages were. “You’re more important here. We have to know where this woman and her father are,” he added wearily.

“When will you shoot me?” I trembled, propped up on my elbows.

“When you don’t expect it.” He observed me sadly. “Don’t re-joice too soon.” He went to the door and rapped on it. “By the way, it’s the night before Christmas,” he said. “We’re having a social evening. Comrades getting together. Too bad you won’t be with us.”